Welcome to my book blog created 2012 of books I read and review. I exhausted space on my other blog, Pat's Posts. Better to separate my readings from my writings. Eventually I will display my entire library here. I am in the process of moving some reviews from the other blog here as well. The design of this blog has been a work in progress, slowly, bear with me...

MY OTHER BLOG

If you got here because I commented and you were directed to this blog, it is because Blogger will not show both blogs. So you can get to my Pat's Posts, by clicking this link..my miscellany, the first blog while this is just about books.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Pirates of Somalia by Jay Bahadur

At a book sale, I stumbled across this enlightening non-fiction, investigative report of a book, published in 2013 by Pantheon Books of New York, hard back, 272 pages. It's why I like to browse these book sales, especially when the types of books I enjoy most are often discarded and priced very cheap by those whose reading are limited. This was very unfamiliar to me, but at $1 how could I go wrong? Well, it was a treasure to read and a book from which I learned a great deal. I have always wondered just a how the rag tag group of so called pirates of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden could capture merchant ships, Jay Bahadur, a journalist answers all such questions and more in this book which I read in September but did not get to post here. The serendipity of finding "Pirates.." is matched by current interest generated from the recent Tom Hanks movie, about American Captain Richard Philips, captured aboard the vessel, Maersk Alabama in April 2009 by the Somalis. Today Somalia 's Puntland is home to 1.3 million people living below squalor primarily and straddles the shipping bottleneck of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

To attach the word "country" to Somalia, founded in 1998 as a sanctuary for the hundreds of thousands of Darod clans peoples fleeing massacres in the south, is beyond a stretch for the word; there is not really a government, it is run by varying tribes at best, and has rampant illiteracy, no employment, no transit, nomadic paths suffice as roads in most parts, a land of nothing. Pg 10..."contrary to the oft-recycled one-liners found in most news reports, Somalia is not a country in anarchy. Indeed to even speak of Somalia as a uniform entity is a mis-characterization, because in the wake of the civil war the country has broken down into a number of autonomous enclaves." We have a significant population of Somalis settled by our US government in St Paul and Rochester, MN; it is a troubled people who do not assimilate well and the boys and young men are readily recruited by Islamic jihadists today and repatriated to fight "infidels" in Somalia or elsewhere. Pg. 5...."Somalia is like a country out of a twisted fairy tale, an ethereal land given substance only by the stories we are told of it."

His flight to Somalia from Chicago took 45 hours and connecting through five airports, of sorts. The map in the front of the book was an excellent reference for me about the geographic area, central to being understood to appreciate the revelations in the book. I referred to that map repeatedly while reading to distinguish between Somalia and Somaliland, something I never before understood and the locations of Mogadishu, Puntland, Bosasso, and Galkayo. It was an intriguing read. Most of the commercial vessels do not employ security guards which are expensive. The vessels travel slowly and the pirates can easily overtake them.

The author traces the history of the clans and details how piracy is more a business than an organized crime. Reading about the Somali coast guard (pgs.74-76) reveals the circuitous nature of the Somalis who might begin serving in their rag tag coast guard, then move on to employment as guards on foreign vessels and then as greed overcomes their senses, they hijack the very vessels they were hired to protect and link up with pirates only to later on become employed as guards or even service men in the coast guard. The author debunks the myth perpetuated by liberal leaning columnists of how the native fishermen have been driven into piracy while reporting that indeed the waters are being stripped of fish, lobster by the commercial vessels from China and Korea, Taiwan. Corruption is rampant but not deemed bad in Somalia but just how the clans operate politically. International efforts have achieved little to nothing. The foreign lines captured have determined it preferable to pay the sums demanded by the pirates to avoid capturing and then what to do with the pirates. They are not wanted in any of the affected countries. The piracy profits are not all that much because proceeds must be shared amongst many foot soldiers in the piracy and all their families as well as the backers, or investors.

Page 245 summarizes the progress of Somali piracy over the last five years despite international efforts; it has become more lucrative with higher ransoms demanded and paid, the gangs of pirates are slightly more organized and the encounters are becoming bloodier, more violent. The epilogue proposes some solutions including keep on paying. "If there is one thing on which every commentator on Somali piracy agrees, it is that the problem must be solved on land, not merely at sea." page 247. Page 248, "the problem with getting tough with the pirates is that just one misstep could occasion a monumental financial or even ecological disaster, to say nothing of the potential loss of life. ...In short, for pirates, coming home empty handed might prove as lethal as facing a team of Navy SEALS. They are scared, desperate and unpredictable, and only one jittery finger on a grenade launcher would be needed to detonate an oil tanker and send a few hundred million dollars--more than the total of all ransoms paid to date--straight to the bottom of the ocean..."

I give this book 4 1/2 ****; and recommend it to people who want to learn more than the news reporting which is often exaggerated as well as slanted. It is just one more example of why I am amused when people tout the breadth of their knowledge and yet base their opinions on what they hear in the news... Here is the back cover:

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Open Book

Open Book

Your books

I found this scrap clipping clearing out paperwork, there is no author, I wished I'd written it but I didn't and I don't know who did: "Your books are your autobiography; they map your history, reflect your tastes, hold emotional moments between covers."

My rating system 5 *****

I am using a 5 star rating with 5 being excellent, the best read and 1 marginal....some books may not merit 1 star. Life is too short to waste on uninteresting books...or maybe my reading time is too short, or maybe I'm just too short. But there it is 1 low to 5 high.

I read books

“I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has

Book Drunkard Quote LM Reynolds

When you finish a book

When you finish a book

You are the books you read

You are the books you read

My other blog

This is the link to my other blog, where there are reviews of books I have read prior to 2012 as well as other writings http://patonlinenewtime.blogspot.com/

About Me

This is to record books I have read, sometimes my comments may be useful to others. However I set this blog up for tracking my own reads, and a way to not repurchase something I have already read. That purpose does not always work. I do not belong to any book clubs because I prefer to choose my own books to read and the book clubs I tried did not work out for me. I wanted discussion, about writing, authors, the concepts, etc instead all I heard was, "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" no depth of conversation, so I gave up. I have been a life long reader. I will say in retirement, I do not spend enough time just reading, as I imagined I would. My days are busy and so it is unusual for me to carve out time in the day to read, mostly I read for about half an hour prior to bed. Life is different than I thought it would be. .